Friday, September 23, 2011

Leftovers

It's time for another Cuddly Buddly challenge. Have you been on pins and needles waiting for it. Well, I have. The challenge is to add a big number or letter to your creation. I've had this idea to make a gift bag racing through my brain for a couple weeks. The planning, the gathering, the putting it together. I don't think I put as much thought into planning my wedding.

The planning of this bag brings me to this next little story. When you go out to restaurants are you at best an odd duck or worse an embarassment to your family and friends. Crafters are always thinking about making things. For me it's like a never ending ticker tape passing thru my head. I'm always finding inspiration in weird places, always on the look out for materials. So last weekend hubby and I are out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant and we have leftovers. Our waitress came to the table with the fun box and a brown paper bag. Well, the bells are going off in my head, I needed one for this project so I asked the waitress if I could have another bag. The way she looked at me I knew she was wondering if she was translating what I said correctly or what else I could have meant and my hubby is making the "what the heck do you want a second bag for" face. I explained that I wanted to make something and I got another bag. After we got home I found hubby had placed both the bags on my desk and I couldn't tell which one was the unused one. Oh well, go figure, if I hadn't asked for a second one you know that toting bag would have had lots of grease spots on it. But I digress...

For my project I used the "Eline's Digi Set - Baby Girl's Bath & Bedtime". Talk about getting a lot of bang for your buck, well this is it. There are 25 cute as pie images and five patterned papers. If you're a pink kind of girl this set is worth it just for the papers. You download them once and you can use them forever. I can always use the gingham check and the polka dots. If you've visited here often you know how much I use and love pink. Oh, but you need to make a bag for a baby boy, no problem she's got little boy collections too and yes, there's a collection for when you don't know if it'll be a boy or girl.

The big letter on the bag is from a set of rub-ons. After putting it on white card stock I cut it out and then mounted it ontolight pink cardstock cut it out and then repeated on dark pink cardstock. It doesn't show that well in the photo but in real life all those layers look great.

How about a couple tips? If you decorate a bag when you set it out pay attention to which side the seam is on. Don't ask me how I know and don't go taking any close looks at my photo. It's not enough to ruin your work if you use the wrong side but a seamless side looks better. In addition to the seam, there's usually a manufacturers mark on the bag which may or may not show when you fold the top down, so be prepared to cover it. Also if the bag's edge isn't very nice you will want to use a die cut on it. Border punches don't work so well, been there done that and had to die cut it afterwards. The ribbon isn't just a decoration, it's attached by several glue dot to the back of the bag. You could punch holes or slots to wind yiour ribbon through. Whatever works for you. The bag that inspired me used ribbon through slots. You can see it in the July/August 2011 Papercrafts magazine on page 28. But with that bag you have to put your gift inside and staple it closed, with the ribbon affixed to back you can open and close the bag over and over again which means the recipient can open it without ruining it and afterwards put it out on display and have it be functional.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope I've inspired you to play along with us at the Cuddly Buddly challenge to add a big letter or number to your project. You don't have to use Cuddly Buddly products to play along, but if you've got them we'd love to see what you create with them. By the way, did you know there's some free digi images available, well, now you do.

Fab card, LOVE that big letter too! great project and tips! Thanks coming to play with us this week for the one for the Kids Challenge @ Top Tip Tuesday and I hope you can come and play again soon, Hugs Samantha